3 “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 3–4 (ESV)
Today’s text contain the thematic verses of Jude’s epistle to the church. Jude initially wanted to write about our common salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. In other words, the Gospel. At the center, or crux, of the Gospel is the Cross.
“ For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18 (ESV)
2 “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1–2 (ESV)
Why the cross? The Apostle Paul summarized the Gospel, and the central focus of the cross, in his Epistle to the Romans.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:21–26 (ESV)
However, Jude saw the need to encourage true believers in Christ to earnestly contend for the essential doctrine of salvation. It was not just important to know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but also to intensely struggle to guard and maintain its true message.
The true message of the Gospel concerns the virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. While all of these truths are essential, they are meaningless without the centrality of the cross. In other words, Jude sought to maintain the cross, symbolizing the substitutionary atonement by Christ, as the crux of the Gospel.
On this Good Friday, I share an article by Dr. James Montgomery Boice. He served as the pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Boice also served as Chairman of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy for over ten years and was a founding member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He entitled his article The Centrality of the Cross. It is taken from his book Foundations of the Christian Faith.
If the death of Christ on the cross is the true meaning of the Incarnation, then there is no gospel without the cross. Christmas by itself is no gospel. The life of Christ is no gospel. Even the resurrection, important as it is in the total scheme of things, is no gospel by itself. For the good news is not just that God became man, nor that God has spoken to reveal a proper way of life for us, or even that death, the great enemy, is conquered.
Rather, the good news is that sin has been dealt with (of which the resurrection is a proof); that Jesus has suffered its penalty for us as our representative, so that we might never have to suffer it; and that therefore all who believe in him can look forward to heaven.
Emulation of Christ’s life and teaching is possible only to those who enter into a new relationship with God through faith in Jesus as their substitute. The resurrection is not merely a victory over death (though it is that) but a proof that the atonement was a satisfactory atonement in the sight of the Father (Rom 4:25); and that death, the result of sin, is abolished on that basis.
Any gospel that talks merely of the Christ-event, meaning the Incarnation without the atonement, is a false gospel. Any gospel that talks about the love of God without pointing out that his love led him to pay the ultimate price for sin in the person of his Son on the cross is a false gospel. The only true gospel is of the ‘one mediator’ (1 Tim. 2:5-6), who gave himself for us.
Finally, just as there can be no gospel without the atonement as the reason for the Incarnation, so also there can be no Christian life without it. Without the atonement, the Incarnation theme easily becomes a kind of deification of the human and leads to arrogance and self-advancement. With the atonement the true message of the life of Christ, and therefore also of the life of the Christian man or woman, is humility and self-sacrifice for the obvious needs of others.
The Christian life is not indifference to those who are hungry or sick or suffering from some other lack. It is not contentment with our own abundance, neither the abundance of middle class living with home and cars and clothes and vacations, nor the abundance of education or even the spiritual abundance of good churches, Bibles, Bible teaching or Christian friends and acquaintances.
Rather, it is the awareness that others lack these things and that we must therefore sacrifice many of our own interests in order to identify with them and thus bring them increasingly into the abundance we enjoy… We will live for Christ fully only when we are willing to be impoverished, if necessary, in order that others might be helped.
For the believer in Christ, Good Friday is an opportunity to remember the substitutionary atonement Jesus Christ alone provided and to rejoice in the salvation from the penalty, power, and eventual presence of sin. For the unbeliever, it is another opportunity to reflect upon the substitutionary atonement Jesus Christ alone provided, to repent of sin and to receive Him as Savior and Lord (John 1:12-13).
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here. Have a blessed Good Friday in the Lord.
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 